Rapture

All this had been within her the whole time, in every instant of her every life. Yet only now did Luce feel awake beyond her capacity to imagine what it meant to be awake. A light wind blew across her skin and she could feel the distant sea carried on it from the Mediter-ranean, telling her she was still in Troy. Her vision, too, was clearer than it had ever been before. She saw brilliant dots of pigment making up the wings of a passing golden butterfly. She breathed in the cold air, filling her lungs, smelling the zinc in the loamy soil that would make it fertile in the spring.



“I was there,” she whispered. “I was in—” Heaven.



But she couldn’t say it. She knew too much to deny it—and yet not enough to speak the words. Daniel. He would help her.



Go on, his eyes were pleading.



Where did she begin? She touched the locket with the picture taken when she and Daniel had lived in Milan.



“When I visited my past life in Helston,” she began,



“I learned that our love ran deeper than who we were in any single lifetime—”



“Yes,” Daniel said. “Our love transcends everything.”



“And . . . when I visited Tibet, I learned that a single touch or kiss was not the trigger to my curse.”



“Not touch.” Roland’s voice. He was smiling, standing next to Daniel with his hands clasped behind his back. “Not touch but self-awareness. A level you weren’t ready for—until now.”



“Yes.” Luce touched her forehead. There was more, so much more. “Versailles.” She began to speak more quickly. “I was condemned to marry a man I didn’t love.



And your kiss released me, and my death was glorious because we would always find each other again. Forever.”



“Together forever, whatever the weather,” Arriane chimed in, swiping damp eyes on Roland’s shirtsleeve.



By now Luce’s throat felt so tight it was difficult to speak. But it was no longer sore. “I didn’t realize until London that your curse was so much worse than mine,” she said to Daniel. “What you had to go through, losing me—”



“It never mattered,” Annabelle murmured, her wings buzzing so much that her feet were inches off the ground.



“He would always wait for you.”



“Chichén Itzá.” Luce closed her eyes. “I learned that an angel’s glory could be deadly to mortals.”



“Yes,” Steven said. “But you’re still here.”



“Keep going, Luce.” Francesca’s voice was more encouraging than it had ever been at Shoreline.



“Ancient China.” She paused. This one’s significance was different from the others. “You showed me that our love was more important than any arbitrary war.” No one spoke. Daniel gave the faintest nod.



And that was when Luce understood, not just who she was—but what it all added up to. There was another lifetime from her voyage through the Announcers that Luce felt she had to mention. She took a breath.



Don’t think of Bill, she told herself. You are not afraid.



“When I was locked in the tomb in Egypt, I knew once and for all that I would always choose your love.” That was when the angels dropped to one knee, gazing up at her expectantly—all of them except Daniel.



His eyes glowed the most potent shade of violet she had ever seen. He reached for her, but before his hands met hers:



“Auugh!” Luce cried out as a sharp pain sliced through her back. Her body convulsed with a foreign, piercing sensation. Her eyes teared. Her ears rang. She thought she might be sick from the pain. But slowly, it localized, from an acute agony all over her back, into two small sections at the tops of her shoulder blades.



Was she bleeding? She reached back, over her shoulder. The wound felt tender and raw, and also as if something were being drawn out from within her. It didn’t hurt, but it was bewildering. Panicked, she whirled her head around but she could see nothing, could only hear the sound of skin sliding and being stretched, the thrrrrrp that sounded like new muscles were being generated.



Then came a sudden feeling of heaviness, as if weights had been strapped around her shoulders.



And then—in her peripheral vision, vast billowing whiteness on either side of her as a collective gasp rose from the angels’ lips.



“Oh, Lucinda,” Daniel whispered, his hand covering his mouth.



It was this easy: She spread her wings.



They were luminous, buoyant, impossibly light, made of the finest, most reflective empyrean matter. From tip to tip, her wingspan was maybe thirty feet, but they felt vast, endless. She felt no more pain. When her fingers curled around the base of them behind her shoulders, they were several inches thick and plush. They were silver, yet not silver, like the surface of a mirror. They were inconceivable; they were inevitable.



They were her wings.



They contained every ounce of strength and empow-erment she had amassed over the millennia she had lived.



And at the slightest whim of a thought, her wings began to beat.



Her first thought: I can do anything now.



Wordlessly, she and Daniel reached for one another’s hands. Their wing tips arched forward in a kind of kiss, like the angels’ wings on the Qayom Malak. They were crying and laughing, and soon, they were kissing.



“So?” he asked.



She was stunned and amazed—and happier than she’d ever been before. It couldn’t possibly be real, she thought—unless she spoke the truth aloud, with Daniel and the rest of the fallen angels there to witness.



“I’m Lucinda,” she said. “I’m your angel.”



SEVENTEEN



THE INVENTION OF LOVE



Flying was like swimming, and Luce was good at both.



Her feet lifted off the ground. It took no thought or preparation. Her wings beat with sudden intuition. Wind hummed against the fibers of her wings, carrying her in the gauzy pink sky. Aloft, she felt the weight of her body, especially in her feet, but overpowering that was a new, unimaginable buoyancy. She slid over low tiers of clouds, causing the slightest disruption, like a breeze passing through a chime.



She gazed from one wing tip to the other, examining their silver-pearl luster, in awe of all her changes. It was as if the rest of her body deferred to her wings now.



They responded at the first inkling of desire, elegant strokes that generated tremendous velocity. They flattened like an airfoil to glide solely on momentum, then pulled back into a heart shape behind her shoulders as she swizzled straight into the air.



Her first flight.



Except . . . it wasn’t. What Luce knew now, as keenly as her wings knew how to fly, was that there had been a monumental before. Before Lucinda Price, before her soul had ever seen the curving Earth. For all the lives on Earth she’d witnessed in the Announcers, all the bodies she had inhabited, Luce had barely scratched the surface of who she was, who she had been. There was a history older than history during which she’d beat these wings.



She could see the others watching her from the ground. Daniel’s face shone with tears. He had known this all along. He had waited for her. She wanted to reach him, wanted him to soar up and fly with her—but then, suddenly, she couldn’t see him anymore.



The light gave way to total darkness . . .



Of another memory crashing through.



She closed her eyes and surrendered to it, letting it carry her back. Somehow she knew that this was the earliest memory, the moment at the furthest reaches of her soul. Lucinda had been there from the beginning of the beginning.



The Bible had left this part out:



Before there was light, there were angels. One moment, darkness; the next, the warm feeling of being coaxed out of inexistence by a gentle, magnificent hand.



God created the Heavenly host of angels—all three hundred and eighteen million of them—a single, brilliant moment. Lucinda was there, and Daniel, and Roland and Annabelle and Cam—and millions more, all perfect, all glorious, all designed to adore their Creator.



Their bodies were made of the same substance that composed the firmament of heaven. They were not flesh and blood, but empyreal matter, the stuff of light itself—strong, indestructible, beautiful to behold. Their shoulders, arms, and legs shimmered into being, foreshadowing the shapes mortals would take upon their own creation.



The angels all discovered their wings simultaneously, each pair slightly different, reflecting the soul of its pos-sessor.



As early as the angels’ genesis, Lucinda’s wings were bright reflective silver, the color of starlight. They had shone in their singular glory since the dawn of the dawn of time.



Creation occurred at the speed of God’s will, but it unfolded in Luce’s memory like a story, another of God’s earliest creations, a by-product of time. One moment there was nothing; then Heaven was replete with angels.



In those days, Heaven was limitless, its ground covered by cloudsoil, a soft white substance like misty cloud that covered the angels’ feet and wing tips when they walked along the ground.



There were endless tiers in Heaven, each level teem-ing with alcoves and winding paths fanning out in all directions under a honey-colored sky. The air was perfumed with nectar welling in delicate white flowers springing up in delightful groves. Their round blooms dotted all of Heaven’s nooks and crannies, looking something like ancestors of white peonies.



Orchards of silver trees bore the most delicious fruits that had ever existed. The angels feasted and gave thanks for their first and only home. Their voices joined together in praise of their Creator, forming a blended sound that in humans’ throats would later be known as harmony.



A meadow rolled into existence, dividing the orchard in two. And when everything else in Heaven was complete, God placed a stunning Throne at the head of the meadow. It pulsed with divine light.



“Come before me,” God commanded, settling into the deep seat with deserved satisfaction. “Henceforth you will know me as the Throne.”



The angels gathered on the plain of Heaven and approached the Throne in gladness. They flowed naturally into a single line, ranking themselves instantly and forevermore. By the time they neared the edge of the meadow, Lucinda remembered that she could not clearly see the Throne. It shone too brightly for angels’ eyes to with-stand. She also remembered that she had once been the third angel in line—the third angel closest to God.



One, two, three.



Her wings stretched and thickened with the honor.



In the air over the Throne, eight ledges made of rippled silver hung in an arch, like a canopy sheltering the Throne. God called the first eight angels in the line to fill these seats and become the Throne’s Archangels. Lucinda took her place on the third seat from the left. It fit her body precisely, having been created just for her. This was where she belonged. Adoration poured from her soul, flowing onto God.



It was perfect.



It did not last.



God had more plans for the universe. Another memory filled Lucinda, causing her to shiver.



God left the angels.



All was joyful in the Meadow, and then the Throne became empty. God walked past the thresholds of Heaven, went away to create the stars and the Earth and the moon.



Man and woman hovered near the brink of existence.



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